Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Lev Chernyi/1

Lev Chernyi

 * • [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Good_article_reassessment/Lev_Chernyi/1&action=watch Watch article reassessment page] • Most recent review
 * Result: Delisted. &#126;~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 23:49, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria This is another article that was given a GA assessment over a decade ago. The original GA review was incredibly short and didn't really cover any of the GA criteria. I thought it'd be worth me going over the criteria and seeing if it still holds up.
 * 1) Is it well written?
 * A. The prose is clear and concise, and the spelling and grammar are correct:
 * Prose is understandable, for the most part. No major issues with spelling or grammar.
 * B. It complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation:
 * The layout of the article goes against the manual of style, as it currently has its "See also" section below its footnotes and references. This is easily fixed though.
 * 1) Is it verifiable with no original research?
 * A. It contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline:
 * Its sources are included and formatted properly.
 * B. Reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose):
 * I'm not sure I'd call The Match!, an individualist anarchist magazine, a reliable source. Not only is its editorial oversight iffy, but it's clearly closely paraphrasing much of its text from Avrich's book, to the point it's questionable why it's being cited in the first place. I've also identified a few cases in which a source isn't cited inline with the information it is pulling from: "Chernyi advocated the "free association of independent individuals" in a book titled Associational Anarchism and published in 1907." Despite this sentence clearly being a rearranged version of what Phillips 1984 said, it doesn't cite Philips, instead its cited to the primary source, which is in Russian. For the sentence that says "Scholars including Avrich and Allan Antliff have interpreted this vision of society to have been greatly influenced by the individualist anarchists Max Stirner, and Benjamin Tucker" it cites Antliff, but not Avrich. This is problematic, as Antliff never actually mentions Benjamin Tucker as an influence, only Avrich does. But the way it's presented here, you'd think both authors considered both Stirner and Tucker to be influences, and that Antliff mentioned himself and Avrich's thoughts on this.
 * C. It contains no original research:
 * Quite a few of the things said in this article failed verification. I'd already removed some original research from the article, but there's certainly more.
 * D. It contains no copyright violations nor plagiarism:
 * Soon after the article was assessed to be GA, a couple editors raised an issue with plagiarism on the talk page. But they were shrugged off by the author, who didn't see the problem with it. I thought I'd check it for lingering cases of plagiarism, and sure enough: Going through it with Earwig's tool, there are still clearly problems with the article lifting entire sentences from Philips 1984. I've also found a couple cases where the article uses identical phrasing to Avrich, without attribution, for example describing Chernyi as a "vociferous advocate" of expropriation. I also checked Cooke 1999, and sure enough, almost all of the sentence starting with "A personal acquaintance of Lev Kamenev" is plagiarised from this source. The subsequent section cited to Cooke is also too closely paraphrased for comfort and Chernyi's description as "one of anarchism's main ideologues" is word for word from Cooke.
 * 1) Is it broad in its coverage?
 * A. It addresses the main aspects of the topic:
 * It certainly hits the main beats, but there's definitely more sources that could be used to build this article further, especially in Russian. There's also some cases in which it seems to assume no information exists. Like it says Chernyi's birth date is unknown, which may have been true for the author at the time of writing, but we've known for some years now from police archives that Chernyi was born in the Smolensk Governorate on 16 February 1878.
 * B. It stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style):
 * It goes a bit too into the weeds about the activities of the groups he was involved in, but it's nothing major. A few cuts for concision would go a long way.
 * 1) Is it neutral?
 * It represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each:
 * I think there are bits were it approaches non-neutrality, but these would be fixed by dealing with the plagiarism issues.
 * 1) Is it stable?
 * It does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute:
 * No reversions have been made since 2020. It hasn't received many major changes since its original GA review.
 * 1) Is it illustrated, if possible, by images?
 * A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content:
 * Photos are in the public domain. I even managed to find an example of pre-1929 US publication of the photograph of Chernyi for the purposes of this reassessment.
 * B. Images are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:
 * Bukharin's photo is tangentially relevant, but I'm not sure positioning it like this is necessary. It could easily be cut.
 * 1) Overall:
 * Pass or Fail:
 * Were I reviewing this article now, I would have quick failed it on the issue of plagiarism alone. The other issues with the article certainly tip the scales for me that I don't think this article meets GA criteria, nor do I think it ever did. Changes could definitely be made to the article to bring it up to snuff, and indeed the plagiarised sections are the most in need of editing, but it's quite far from going over the line for me. --Grnrchst (talk) 14:30, 5 March 2024 (UTC)